Keyword research toolsWhich ones to use?

Keyword research tools: which ones to use?

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Earlier, I wrote a post about the use of long tail keywords. Focusing on long tail keywords could be a good strategy, especially when trying to rank in a highly competitive market. But how do you decide on which (long tail) keywords you want to rank? This post will give you some handy tips and keyword research tools to make your keyword research a bit easier.

Repeat keyword research regularly!

Keyword research is an activity you undertake every now and then. If you have a clear definition about the product or service you want to ‘sell’ with your website, you should be able to come up with keywords, related keywords and even more related keywords to make your awesome website (more) findable. As your product and the market will evolve, your keyword strategy should do the same.

Resemble the vocabulary of your audience

The keywords you want to focus your SEO on, should closely resemble the vocabulary of your audience. In order to come up with the proper keywords you really have to get inside the heads of the people who search for your website. What terms will people use? How do people search? Which question does your website answer? You should create a list of all search terms people could use and think of combinations and nuances within these search terms.

Keyword research tools to use

Making a list remains hard. And up until a few years ago, doing your keyword research was much easier. You could simply check Google Analytics to see on which terms people found your website. That is no longer possible. So you’re pretty much left in the dark about the terms people use in search engines to end up at your website. Luckily, there are some other tools which can make your keyword research a bit easier, and could help you speed up the process a bit:

Google Adwords Keyword Planner

Use the Google Adwords Keyword Planner to find new and related keywords, but ignore the search volume data! The search volume data in the planner is really only useful for keywords that you’re actually spending money to advertise on. Otherwise, these volumes are not reliable. While not really helpful to decide which keyword is most used by your potential audience, Google Adwords Keyword Planner makes a useful tool in coming up with ideas for potential keywords!

Yoast Suggests

Joost developed his own keyword research tool to come up with keywords as well! Yoast Suggests uses the Google Suggest functionality you know from searching in Google. It finds the keyword expansions Google gives and then requests more of them. So if you type ‘example‘, it’ll also give you the expansions for ‘example a…’ till ‘example z…’ etc. Just go on and try it and fill out some of your potential keywords. It’s a great way to quickly find more long tail keywords you can focus on.

Google Trends

Google Trends allows you to compare the traffic for sets of keywords. You can even see the difference for numerous geographical regions. It’s very important to check Google Trends if you expect that some of your keywords are seasonal, for instance due to regulations, holiday seasons etc.

Your internal search engine

What are people looking for on your site? These terms are keywords in the vocabulary of your actual audience and should definitely be added to your keyword list. Do not forget to look at the keywords people filled in that didn’t get any results: this was stuff people were expecting but didn’t find. You can look into the results of your internal search in Google Analytics at Behavior → Site Search → Search Terms.

Conclusion

These keyword research tools should make it easier to create a list of relevant search terms. You should make sure to create awesome landing pages for keywords you want to be found on. You should also think about cornerstone content articles and a great internal linking structure in order to make your SEO strategy complete. In our Content SEO eBook we dive munch deeper into keywords, landing pages and long tail keywords.

56 Responses to Keyword research tools: which ones to use?

Of course, Google’s keywords planner is the best at the moment but you can also use moz to find the keywords and competitors of you website.

By wayzonon 24 August, 2015

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In this post given heading is Keyword research tools.which one use.but only one keyword tools focused and discussed about this .but Lots of tools available for Keyword research like Keyword chat,word steam, ERPWoo Keyword Finder,Keywordtool.io,Niche Laboratory and more.

Great article. I have got another tool, Webbee Spider, which scrap competitor’s keywords from titles, h1 and anchor texts. A combination of semRUSH, Keyword Planner and this tool can be used for keyword research. See the comment by some Moz contributor.

Redirects are the feature of Premium version. If you had a premium and you updated plugin, there is a chance your license key is disappeared (happens in my case every time after update). You should activate your license key again so it may solve the problem.

Hi and thanks for the article!
There is a thing that puzzles me enormously about keywords:
Say a terrific keyword would be “designer amsterdam” according to Yoast suggests et al – and say that similarly virtually nobody searches for “designer in amsterdam”… This happens all the time in my country at least – this kind of variation.

Well – it is very hard to incorporate the exact keyword “designer amsterdam” in my blog post , in the meta description etc whereas “designer IN amsterdam” is easy.

What should I do? Go for the keyword “designer in amsterdam” that nobody searches for and maintain good language in my post, or should I go for “designer amsterdam” and just pretend that the lack of “in” in my texts is just a typo?

Hi Marie! In my opinion, you should maintain a good language in your post. Finally, Google will catch your page which is well optimized for that topic “designer in amsterdam”, if somebody just searching the phrase “designer amsterdam”.

Great tools…
Still I don’t indsrstand way Google dumd down his keyword tool? 4 years ago the keyword tool was a lot better with better suggestions and more data …
Any idea way? Or is this a mis preseption by me?

Thanks for the great post. when im about to search a new keywordset, i always try to get info from the clients customers . they use different terms more often then i thought. these insider infos are really valuable imo.

So far, I’m just using google search to find some keyword. And maybe I will try your keyword tool too

By Debbie Sessionson 23 October, 2014

The simplest KW research tool is google. Type in your topic and scroll to the bottom to see what related results show up. Use those to either write an article or to supplement other articles with some of the keywords. Yes, they are primary phrases so you may not rank for them right away but building your site with these in it will help get rank for them eventually. Also look at what other articles that show up for the keyword use.

Nice reading!
Bad timing for my part tho. New to the game, reading day and night learning how it works and what to avoid, 2 day from releasing blog and they change the rules of the game! :)
Mentioning SEO tool, a big comfort is the tool I discovered last week., no more fighting with google keyword planner.
This SEO tool has a free version, worthy by far, I tested the payed versions, and will most likely subscribe until the day I leave my keyboard! :) Such a timesaver and nichefinder. http://www.jaaxy.com/?a_aid=80c96171 I am sure there are other tools out there as well, and I am still a newbie, but this toll made me feel like a pro overnight.
Not to mention, together with Yoast WordPress SEO to organize all the goodies :)
I am not sending you over to buy, thats to transparent in a fora like this, but just check it out, the free version.

yes I’ve tried several keyword research tool what you described above, but it looks like I have not been up to use it. and I am interested in your ebook, hopefully I can learn about the optimization wordpress from u

After using keyword research tool, if we had to use a keyword in a certain time, and then after doing research again, there is a change in the keyword word combinations, do we need to rename the url of the page that already exists?

Hi Marieke, nice post! Still one question though: could you maybe explain why the estimated search volume of Google keyword planner isn’t useful for SEO purposes? I assumed that the volume indicates how often people use a specific keyword per month. Why isn’t that useful with regard to SEO? Thanks in advance!

That is a friggin’ cool tool. Love it. Thanks. The best thing to do is use a combo of all of the tools… Use Yoast’s to get ideas (very good for this) then the others to drill down on searches & costs.
Cheers!

Thanks for the article, i didnt know yoast had a keyword tool, looks very good. But how do you come up with the suggested keywords? Also, i like google keyword planner, helped me get the first google visitors to my site.

I utilize the Google Suggest Search and type in my keyword I like and see what other great ideas Googles gives me (same idea as the Yoast idea). Thanks for the great article I’m totally going to check these all out.

In this post, we'll give you a step by step instruction on how to find the data that will help you track your SEO using Google Analytics. The videos in this post (without sound so you can watch them everywhere) show you exactly which steps to take to start tracking your SEO.